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Arianna Huffington calls for a Third Women’s Revolution

To redesign a world focused on Augmented Humanity and not Augmented Reality

The way we are working is not working with 87% employees that are disengaged at work

Burnt-out employees are 30% more likely to quit their jobs

75% of all healthcare costs and issues are stress-related and therefore preventable

Women in high-pressured jobs have a 40% greater risk of heart disease and 60% greater risk of diabetes

At the World Government Summit 2018, Arianna Huffington, founder and CEO of Thrive Global asked women to redesign the world they want to inherit.

“We are working in a world where to be constantly ‘switched on’ is rewarded, where burnout equals success, where we forget to recharge ourselves but not our phones, where we take better care of our devices than ourselves, a world where we are losing sleep and our humanity – and this is clearly not working,” said Huffington, whose startup Thrive Global, dedicated to reducing stress and improving wellness launched an app to use technology to help us disconnect with technology.

As paradoxical as it sounds, the Thrive app helps users put their phones on thrive mode when they are busy working on a report, brainstorming, having dinner with the family. While on thrive mode, if the user gets a call or text, the app will send a message notifying the other party that the person is on thrive mode until a specific time.

“The idea is to fundamentally change the culture we have created that glamorizes people who are all the time switched on and connected rather than those that have their priorities right and prefer to spend time with their children or themselves; and let’s face it, who knows how best to create such a world better than women,” said Huffington who was on the Time Magazine's list of the world’s 100 most influential people and on the Forbes Most Powerful Women list.

Elaborating on the Third Women’s Revolution, Arianna Huffington said: “The Third Women’s Revolution changes a workplace culture that views long hours and sleep deprivation as proxies of dedication. It is not sustainable. Women end up paying an even higher price for their participation in the workforce. Women should not have to choose between success and the wellbeing of themselves or their families.”

Huffington is of the firm belief that wellbeing and business outcomes and metrics are closely linked and the more time we allow our brains to ‘clean up’ the more successful we will be in the true sense of the term – “We have to realize that technology is a fabulous tool but a terrible master.”

In a passionate effort to shift the needle towards creating a world where humans can hone their inherent creativity, compassion and wisdom, without falling prey to AI, Huffington believes that there is hope and one such beacon of a possible new world order are countries such as the UAE where there is a Minister for Artificial Intelligence, but also a Minister for Happiness and Wellbeing.

Huffington is also the co-founder of The Huffington Post, which she launched in 2005. The news and blog site quickly became one of the world’s most widely read digital media publications and won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for national reporting.

In August 2016, she launched Thrive Global, a corporate and consumer wellbeing and productivity platform with the mission of changing the way we work and live by ending the collective delusion that burnout is the price we must pay for success.

Under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, the World Government Summit 2018 runs from February 11 to 13 at the Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai. The landmark event convenes more than 4,000 participants from 140 countries, including heads of state and governments, as well as top-tier representatives of 16 international organizations.